Research Article
PV Joshi, AA Mandot , BH Patel
Abstract
In this work, an attempt has been made to replace wood as raw material by agricultural waste, apart from that exploring the possibility of using enzymatic hydrolysis in place of acid hydrolysis for preparation of Nano cellulose (NC). The morphology of prepared Nano cellulose was observed under polarized microscope and SEM, uniform distribution of rod shaped, micro and nano sized cellulose fibers were observed. The average size of the NC as measured in zeta particle size analyzer was 53.94 nm and the average length was 551.4 nm. FTIR analysis confirms the presence of cellulose group in the extract. The rheological behavior of banana stem powder and NC indicates decrease in viscosity from 1.7 η to 0.6 η and in degree of polymerization from 323 to 116, respectively. X-ray diffraction and TGA analysis of both raw banana stem and extracted NC powder shows significant increase in crystallinity and thermal property.